Karen Young - Private Lives

“Over here.” Louie’s voice came from the gazebo. He began to rise from an old-fashioned glider. There was no sign of Jesse. “How’d it go?”

“We’ll know tomorrow,” Elizabeth said. “The judge will give us his decision then.”

“Oh, shoot, I’ll ruin these panty hose if I go out there.” Stepping back, Gina lifted the hem of her skirt—also borrowed from Elizabeth—and wiggled out of the panty hose. Then, sighing with relief, she stepped barefoot onto the flagstone surface. “Where’s my honey?” she called, raising her voice in the singsong way that Jesse loved.

Jesse squealed, emerging from a pile of raked leaves that hadn’t been there when they’d left this morning. “Here I am, Mommy!” Laughing, she ran flat-out for her mother, arms open wide. The golden retriever raced by her side. Both outdistanced a tow-headed boy, who was just a fraction of an inch taller than Jesse. Gina laughed as thirty-five pounds of small female energy crashed into her legs and two short arms closed tight around her thighs. The dog leaped around them, grinning and barking ecstatically.

“Missed me, didn’t you, punkin?” Gina framed Jesse’s small face between her hands and gave her a kiss on the nose.

“You were gone a long time, Mommy.”

“It sure seemed like it to me, too, baby.” Gina plucked a few dead leaves from her daughter’s tangled mop. “But I came home as soon as I could. Hi, Cody,” she said to the little boy, who smiled shyly while hanging on to the dog’s collar.

“Was she a good girl, Louie?”

The aging man was dusting leaves and debris from his pants. “She’s always a good girl,” Louie Christian said, giving Jesse a wink.

“What is it with that wink?” Gina asked, pretending to frown.

“Don’t go in Papa Louie’s kitchen, Mommy,” Jesse warned. Beside her, Cody buried his face in the dog’s ruff.

“Why, what would I find in Papa Louie’s kitchen?” Gina asked.

“They wanted to make play dough,” Louie explained. “From scratch.”

“No, from flour and salt, Papa Louie,” Jesse said.

Louie gave Gina another wink. “My mistake.”

Gina’s hands went to her hips. “So you said absolutely not because a kitchen is no place for two five-year-olds, except for eating. And besides, fooling around with flour and salt and who-knows-what-all to make play dough is a project to be supervised by moms. That is what you said, isn’t it, Louie?”

Louie scratched his bearded cheek. “Well…”

Jesse was jumping up and down and Cody was grinning. “He let us do it because we knew how, Mommy! We learned at school, didn’t we, Cody?”

“Uh-huh.” Blond head bobbing.

“I’m afraid I didn’t realize exactly what was required to make play dough,” Louie said apologetically. “And then there seemed to be flour everywhere and Archie was going to track it back into the den, so I turned my back for a moment to put her outside, then Cody said he knew how much water it took, but apparently he overestimated a bit and then—” He was shaking his head. “Actually, it was the mixer that did most of the damage, I’m afraid.”

Gina reached up and flicked something white and sticky from Louie’s beard.

“Oops.” Jesse covered her mouth and her smile. “I thought we cleaned you all up, Papa Louie.”

“But did you clean up Papa Louie’s kitchen, young lady?” she asked sternly.

“Papa Louie said we’d better go outside while the gittin’ was good,” Jesse said. “So we did.”

“It was too overwhelming for them to clean up,” Louie said, looking pained. “And I couldn’t leave them outside without supervision. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t want that.” Gina rolled her eyes. “Look, Louie, you’re going to have to be more forceful with them, Jesse especially. She can talk the tail off a tiger if you let her. Now, next time—”

“Next time I won’t let them in the kitchen,” Louie said, looking relieved to get only a lecture.

“No, next time you won’t let them talk you into beginning a project that even an experienced childcare worker would hesitate over.” After a moment, she gave a resigned sigh. “Okay, the damage is done, but we have to go over to Papa Louie’s house now and clean up.” She took Jesse’s hand and motioned for Cody to follow. When Louie made to join them, she shook her head. “Uh-uh, Louie. They did the mess, they’ll clean it up. You go back to the glider and let Elizabeth tell you about the hearing.”

“Good idea.” Elizabeth, smiling faintly over the situation, nudged Louie toward the gazebo.

“Is it good news?” Louie asked, not ready to sit.

“Tell him, Liz.” And with that, she picked up her pace, tugging Jesse along with Cody, and headed toward Louie’s house just visible through a thick hedge of oleander.

“Want some more iced tea?” Elizabeth asked, noticing the glass on the table beside the glider.

“No, no, I’m nearly floating now.” Instead of relaxing, Louie sat up straight on the edge of a cushion as Elizabeth took a seat in a white wicker chair. “I’m surprised the hearing’s over. I thought it would go into a second day. Did Austin do the decent thing and withdraw his motion?”

“Austin and decency is an oxymoron,” Elizabeth said with a grimace. “Gina and I testified this morning, then he took the stand after lunch. Judge Hetherington—”

“Old Lock-’em-up Larry,” Louie muttered as he tossed what was left of his drink into the grass.

“You know him?” Elizabeth asked.

“I’ve watched him preside in a couple of high-profile cases,” Louie said, “but that was years ago. I hope he’s mellowed in his old age.”

It always amazed her how informed Louie was for a man who seldom left his house except to stroll over to hers. He had an opinion about politics, about social problems, about current faces in the news. It shouldn’t surprise her that he recognized the names of locals in the legal community. Judge Hetherington had been on the bench in Houston for over thirty years. Where Louie Christian had been for most of that time was a mystery. He was vague about his past, which was fine with her. She wasn’t one to pry into anyone’s past. It was the present that mattered where Louie was concerned. For one thing, he was the nearest thing to a grandparent that Jesse had, since Austin’s father was a cold fish and his mother lived with her second husband in Phoenix, Arizona, and had never expressed any interest in spending time with the little girl. Louie had an endless supply of anecdotes about his boyhood that enchanted Jesse. Elizabeth herself was charmed by his tales, so much so that she’d used a couple to illustrate themes in her books.

“Let’s pray that he has mellowed,” Elizabeth said now, plucking a spent bloom from a camellia. She’d have to think about getting her yard man to put in some petunias soon. And possibly some daylilies. The lantana would return on its own, flourishing in Houston’s heat. One of the perks of the climate was that her yard was alive with color year-round.

“Exactly what happened today, Liz?”

“Ryan Paxton was brutal to both of us on the stand. Then Austin lied outrageously when it was his turn. There’s no one to refute what goes on between two people in the privacy of their home, Louie, so he painted a picture of Gina that could have made even me wonder if she was an unfit mother. Maude did a good job trying to show that Austin was motivated by a self-serving need to give Gina nothing in the way of decent financial support, but what concerns me most is Austin’s claim that she is unstable.” She stared beyond the trees to the older man’s house, frowning. “She’ll be lucky to come out of this with equally shared custody, Louie. Even worse, it’ll be a miracle if she gets a pittance in the way of child support, too.”